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LSO/Petrenko at the Barbican

Richard Morrison

October 22 2012, 1:00am, The Times

Entrusting a string of important concerts to an 85-year-old conductor, however great, is always going to be risky. And there can be no doubt that Colin Davis’s continuing illness has cast a shadow over the start of the London Symphony Orchestra’s season.

The latest to fill the breach is Vasily Petrenko. Oh lumme, as they probably don’t say in his native St Petersburg. With his own orchestra in Liverpool, in the right repertoire (usually Slavonic and full-on), the young Russian can be as incisive as a laser. But in Elgar’s First Symphony he marshalled the notes efficiently enough, yet rarely seemed aware of how subtle and multilayered are the textures and quicksilver mood changes in this Edwardian epic. He gave too much weight to those…